Revision as of 21:10, 21 April 2007

Points of InterestRecently rebuilt after being bombed by the Green Goblin

First AppearanceAmazing Spider-Man #1 (1963)

Founded in 1897, the Daily Bugle was purchased a few decades after its inception by businessman William Walter Goodman, who prized selfless human achievement above all else and who lent his name to the building the newspaper called home. In 1939, when the android Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner began alternately terrorizing and protecting the city, Bugle photographer Phil Sheldon immortalized many of their exploits. Following Captain America's debut in late 1940, Bugle reporter Jeff Mace became one of his earliest imitators as the costumed Patriot, although he was just as often active against evil as a correspondent alongside Mary Morgan and freelancer Jack Casey, while C. Thomas Sites and others chronicled the battlefield missions of the Howling Commandos.

In later decades, the Bugle's destiny became inexorably linked with that of J. Jonah Jameson, known for uncovering secret details of the Invaders' wartime missions. Jameson, inspired by the past Bugle editor Walter "Old Man" Jameson (often mistakenly assumed to be Jonah's father) mimicking his signature flat-top and moustache. He rose through the Bugle's ranks as copy boy, reporter, editor and editor-in-chief, championing civil rights and opposition to organized crime. Some twenty years ago, having already emptied his inheritance to buy the Bugle corporation years before, he purchased the entire Goodman Building housing the newspaper to which he had dedicated his life.

In recent years, Jameson's obsession with Spider-Man has shaped the Bugle's perspective on superheroes, centered on suspicion toward masked vigilantes and superhuman feats upstaging straightforward human heroism. The Bugle's offices have been the sites of Spider-Man's battles with Doctor Octopus, the Fly, the Scorpion, the Vulture (Adrian Toomes) and many others. The Bugle building has been twice destroyed during such battles, once by Graviton and once by the Green Goblin (Norman Osborn), but it has been rebuilt each time to remain as active as ever. Despite lukewarm attempts to cover superhuman activity more objectively in its short-lived Pulse feature, the Bugle formally supported the recent passage of the Superhuman Registration Act, but the exposure of longtime Bugle photographer Peter Parker as Spider-Man has undermined the paper’s credibility.